Saturday, February 27, 2016: T-4 days
We had a very sick Little Man and even though I feel like a guilty parent, he got lots of screen time and it probably turned out to be quite a lucky break as no one was bored. We ended up giving our sofa away on Finn.no (I LOVED that sofa…) and then the people didn’t show up and we still had the sofa, which 1) pushed Mia over the edge and she tried to teach Finn.no some manners using some choice words to message the people and 2) was good because Teo needed it. Oscar came to the rescue and he and Jon shifted the rest of the boxes and furniture to the storage unit while Mia dealt with the kitchen. They were locked out of one location which cost precious hours of their time, we were really racing the clock! A young couple came to pick up the stove and the fridge. Even though the only condition was that they would be self sufficient in the pick up, Jon and Oscar had to help them down the stairs. Another time sink! Mia was spending futile hours cleaning the kitchen. Even though the new owners would be demolishing in hours after they got the keys, the real estate sales contract requires the property to be white glove inspection ready.
Sunday, February 28, 2016: T-3 days
Reposted the sofa on Finn.no and there goes the sofa, with a combination of “PHEW” and “OH NO”! Sick Teo gets moved to the folded up bed topper on the floor in the lounge. Despite his fever, he seems happy enough with the laptop and endless Dinosaur Train and DinoTrux. At 1400 the cleaners showed up and we had intended to be long gone by then, as in moved out… We actually thought we would have been on the beach roasting marshmellows with friends and saying tearful goodbyes. As it turned out, many people were away that weekend and we lacked the time to even plan the event, so luckily we were free to work away. We manically giggled at our over-optimistic planning intentions. At 1300 we had to start moving things out of one room at a time so the cleaners could clean them. We continued to chip away at the clean up and started packing our six bags with stuff bound for Itchy Foot at 10:30pm. How did it come to this?!
Monday, February 29, 2016: T-2 days
We finished the sorting and the packing at 4am and collapsed onto the bed topper on the floor with feverish Teo. We were up again at 6am to finish the cleaning we couldn’t do in the dark. Marianne, our next door neighbour was extremely sweet and brought us surprise waffles and coffee at 8am. What a treat and it was so heartwarming that she thought of us! The exchange of keys was at 10am and I was cursing and throwing the last cleaning supplies into the borrowed attic spaces as the doorbell rang. Jon was around the corner having another attic key made so we could retrieve the rest of our stuff (we would be handing over our only attic key and only just realised it). So we wandered around the house saying goodbye to the small details we loved, Teo’s room was especially hard. We had been working so hard, we hadn’t even thought to start saying goodbye. We were all in tears as we left.
Jon brought Teo to his last day of barnehage while I used Solvor’s shower. She was such a lovely neighbour and we really miss her. Teo still talks about her a lot. We had some lunch around the corner and I drove Jon out to his last day of work. They wanted him to have cake and speeches before he left. Mia dropped boxes off in various places and ran some errands before going to pick Teo up at barnehage for the very last time. It was so hard to hug these lovely people that loved Teo as a son and so there was more crying. It was so very emotional! Teo and Mia went to pick up Jon from work and went back to pick up the last of our things.
Solvor and Teo watched Madagascar so Jon and MIa could be quicker. We stopped by the library with six boxes of books, then stopped by Haley and Troll’s who made us a lovely journal with lots of letters of inspiration in it, what a lovely gift! We finally dropped off some more clothes and things at Marianne’s. Teo was in good hands with Solvor and they looked like partners in crime when we returned to pick him up. It was late when we finally got to Rits and Ove’s and they had kindly left us some dinner, wow we had forgotten to eat!
Tuesday, March 1, 2016: T-1 day
Teo was playing with Max and Mathea and Eva in the morning and it was lovely as Jon and Mia sorted a few things. We got a call that there was a mix up with the keya and we had to hurry back to try to sort it. It was lovely that Solvor was there doing a sort out herself and we kept each other company. As we were sorting the attic cages, it started to sleet and Teo and Solvor were in the paper bin jumping to make more space.
We had a car full of stuff and stopped at the recycle station, then went to the doctor for immunizations and then to the storage unit. Teo is pleased that Peligroso is guarding the space. He went to play with Eva in the afternoon.
We didn’t have enough room in the car we had from our car coop so we went to pick up a trailer only to find out we didn’t have a trailer hitch so we had to switch cars in the night. That was fun since we were only allowed to have one car checked out at a time, so we had to wait an hour in between. Tick tock.
We finally stopped by Karen and Lars’ unfortunately after their little man was asleep. Will really miss watching all these kids we know grow up! We brought a lot of Teo’s favorite toys and clothes and there was a great moment when we brought in our safe and also counted all our money in the jar from our Finn.no sales. We hope they still want to speak to us as they had spent a lot of time clearing their space of stuff and they inherited a lot of ours. We really had hoped we would have time for at least a dinner with these lovely people but alas, we grossly underestimated our time. We had a late finish again, sorry again to Rita and Ove, we never did have a chance to drink bubbles with them as promised!
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
SNOW, cold, wet, heavy SNOW, Norway also wanted to say “HADET”
T-6h/5h The last packing and sorting including Teo’s toys and the last of our clothes, and the last run to the storage unit.
T-4h A visit to Telenor to attempt to switch to pay as you go contracts for our phones. Mia’s email was cut off and the woman would not accept a screenshot and no one at Agresso was answering phones as they were in an important meeting, or at lunch. The new SIM card had to activated while still in Norway and we were running out of time.
T-3h Yupp, that is our kitchen being thrown into a container in the street. We grabbed our bags from the attic and handed over a bottle of whiskey to our neighbour as a thank you for lending us the attic compartment that saved us in the last days. Troll pulled up just in time with just the right amount of empathy about the kitchen. Jon had a peek at the demolition site that had been our home and we were off.
T-2h We popped a bottle of bubbles in the car on the way to the airport. We have proof as Troll took video. It was really lovely of him to take time out to see us off. Six big bags are not a lot for sailing around for a year, but they are an awful lot to get into an airport train. But more importantly we didn’t leave Oslo without hugs of a good friend which is worth more than anything else.
T-0 Take off!